The Office of General Services announced the demolition of the buildings in September — some five years after they were initially supposed to be razed. Why the demolitions were halted under the Spitzer Administration remains unclear — though conventional wisdom is that then-OGS Commissioner John Egan, who helped develop the campus in the ’60s, persuaded Spitzer to keep them.

According to the contract announcement from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office, the space currently occupied by Buildings 1 and 1A, which have been vacant since around 2005, will be used as a staging area for the $47 million rehab of Building 5.

Building 5, the former home of the Department of Transportation, is being rehabbed to house OGS’ Business Services Center, which will consolidate back-of-the-shop operations for various state agencies and bring some 1,400 more state workers back to the 330-acre uptown campus.